The Codcast

Two Democrats -- Quentin Palfrey and Jimmy Tingle -- are vying for the September 4 nomination for lieutenant governor. The winner will be paired with the victor in the party’s gubernatorial primary and go into the November match-up against the GOP ticket -- widely expected to be led by Gov. Charlie Baker (who faces underdog challenger Scott Lively) and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito (who is unopposed for the Republican nomination).

The two Democratic hopefuls, who came in for separate conversations on the Codcast, both bring a passion for the party’s values of tackling inequality, but with very different backgrounds.

Two Democrats -- Quentin Palfrey and Jimmy Tingle -- are vying for the September 4 nomination for lieutenant governor. The winner will be paired with the victor in the party’s gubernatorial primary and go into the November match-up against the GOP ticket -- widely expected to be led by Gov. Charlie Baker (who faces underdog challenger Scott Lively) and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito (who is unopposed for the Republican nomination).

The two Democratic hopefuls, who came in for separate conversations on the Codcast, both bring a passion for the party’s values of tackling inequality, but with very different backgrounds.

Will this be a change election in Massachusetts?

A lot of political energy has been unleashed in reaction to Donald Trump’s election two years ago. Nationally, Democrats are hoping it will translate into big gains in the midterm congressional elections, with possibility of taking back control of the House.

In Massachusetts, where Democrats already hold the overwhelming share of elected offices, that energy and the appetite for change is mostly playing out within Democratic primaries, with several longtime incumbents facing serious challenges for the first time in years. The two most prominent races are the 7th Congressional District, where 20-year incumbent Michael Capauno is being challenged by Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley, and the race for secretary of state, where 24-year incumbent Bill Galvin faces another Boston city councilor, Josh Zakim.

CommonWealth colleagues Bruce Mohl, Jack Sullivan, and I explored what’s going on here in a pre-primary installment of the Codcast.

Mayor Jon Mitchell has come out strongly against the expansion proposals, arguing they would be devastating to city finances and the state of its district schools.

The head of the state charter school association, Tim Nicolette, penned an op-ed last week in the New Bedford Standard-Times in support of the charter growth and the options they give families who are desperate for quality school options. He said New Bedford is the fourth lowest performing school district in the state. “Parents and students deserve better, and they shouldn’t have to wait another generation to get it,” he wrote.

Mitchell joined the Codcast to talk about the charter issue. We reached out to the charter school association to invite Nicolette to take part. He declined.

In today’s Codcast, we talk to two Democrats challenging incumbents from their own party – Samantha (Sam) Hammar of Melrose, who is taking on Sen. Jason Lewis of Winchester, and Ted Steinberg of Needham, who is running against Rep. Denise Garlick of Needham.

Gov. Charlie Baker has an R next to his name, but many Republicans don’t think it belongs there.

Ed Lyons, a Republican activist who is a big fan of Baker, said the governor’s acceptance of the grand bargain in the recently completed legislative session disturbed many in the GOP. The grand bargain embraced legislation raising the hourly minimum wage to $15 and mandating paid medical and family leave as a way to take ballot questions off the table that would have accomplished both actions more quickly and would also have cut the sales tax to 5 percent.

“They are worried. A lot of Republicans are losing faith in the Republican character of our governor,” Lyons said on CommonWealth’s Codcast. “Charlie Baker doesn’t sound like the Republicans they’re seeing on Fox News.”

Lyons said some Republicans would like to see Baker go to war with the Democrat-controlled Legislature and fight for more conservative causes. He, however, says Baker’s strength is in choosing which battles to fight and framing issues differently than a Democrat would.

To say there’s a chasm as wide as the Rio Grande between both sides of the immigration debate would be an understatement. The conversation about compromise is a non-starter because neither side can even agree on what terms to use.

US Attorney for Massachusetts Andrew Lelling, in a recent sit-down with CommonWealth, acknowledged his office is ramping up identifying defendants by their nationalities if they are immigrants who commit a crime in the country. And Lelling said he refuses to call them undocumented, the term favored by immigrant advocates, because what they have done is illegal, much like carrying an illegal handgun, “not an undocumented handgun.”

“I think word choice is often a political statement,” Lelling said. “The term undocumented immigrant strikes me as a consciously politicized term. It's a euphemism… So I don't use the term undocumented immigrant where advocates in this area might. I say illegal immigrant because that strikes me as more literally correct.”

Bristol Sheriff Thomas Hodgson, a strident supporter of President Trump’s immigration policies, and Marion Davis of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA), joined The Codcast for an impassioned discussion over the tensions of words in the hot-button debate.

Uber and Lyft are expanding their vision of ride-sharing to include not just cars but bicycles, electric bicycles, and electric scooters.

Uber jumped in first, adding the electric bikeshare company Jump to its app earlier this year in San Francisco and then acquiring the company outright in March for an estimated $100 million.

Lyft earlier this month bought Motivate, the nation’s largest bikeshare company, with operations in such cities as Boston, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. The value of the deal was estimated at $250 million.

And California-based Lime announced recently that its bikes and scooters would also begin appearing on the Uber app and that several investors, including Uber, Fidelity, and Alphabet, the parent of Google, had invested $335 million in the company. The investment suggested the company is now valued at more than $1 billion.

“Our investment and partnership in Lime is another step towards our vision of becoming a one-stop shop for all your transportation needs,” said Rachel Holt, an Uber vice president.

Lime is a dockless bike-sharing company that operates in 16 states and the District of Columbia. In Massachusetts, the company is in 15 communities, including Arlington, Belmont, Chelsea, Everett, Malden, Milton, Needham, Newton, Waltham, and Watertown.

Scott Mullen, Lime’s director of expansion in the northeast, joined Josh Fairchild and Jim Aloisi of TransitMatters on the Codcast to talk about the business. He said 40 percent of trips connect riders to transit, while 28 percent start or end at local retail stores.

Massachusetts is in the midst of procuring vast amounts of clean energy, but on Beacon Hill clean energy advocates say the state isn’t doing nearly enough.

The Senate approved legislation that would triple the annual increase in renewable energy purchases. The House last week took up a bill that would have doubled the annual increase, but then, under pressure from some in the business community, watered it down when the legislation came up for a final vote. The House and Senate will now have to decide whether they can come to agreement on a final bill.

It’s become one of the hottest issues on Beacon Hill, but few understand it well. Three chamber of commerce CEOs, in an op-ed in CommonWealth, insisted Massachusetts was falling behind its neighboring states in pursuing renewables. The CEOs even suggested the state’s bid to build an offshore wind power industry was in jeopardy if much higher renewable purchases were not mandated. “We cannot afford to lose this competition to other states,” they said.

Today’s Codcast takes a closer look at the complex issue and the big takeaway is that the debate over renewables is really a debate about which renewables we should promote.

Alli Gold Roberts says the business community is a bigger supporter of addressing climate change than you might think.

A senior manager for state policy at Ceres, which works with Fortune 500 companies and other business groups in addressing sustainability issues, Roberts said many businesses view climate change from a perspective of self-interest. Transportation, for example, accounts for more than a third of greenhouse gas emissions in New England. Business leaders want to reduce those emissions, but they also want to reduce congestion and improve public transit so their employees can get to work and their products can get to market.

Roberts joined James Aloisi, a board member of TransitMatters, and Stacy Thompson, executive director of the Livable Streets Alliance, on this week’s Codcast. They discussed the role businesses and their employees can play in addressing greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector.